Guesting and Overflow [merged]

I do believe that those who live on a server full time have more “right” to play there than those who guest. I do believe that those who are server natives or residents have invested in their community, their friends, their guild, and the very nature of having to have servers and virtual neighborhoods or boundaries dictates that a choice was made and individuals freely chose and made those choices. Had months to choose another server when it was free. Had plenty of time to get on a “full” server with friends if they timed it properly and really wanted to.

Is guesting the whole of the problem? No. Of course not. Implementing changes to loot that now draw the full server population to an area for a short while for free rares is bound to have an impact. That does not change the fact that people who do guest for the sole reason to chase timers should not be allowed to do so. That is not “playing with friends.” It’s not in tune with ANet’s philosophy that players should be happy to see other players come along.

If the server architecture could handle the load, would I mind? Yes. ANet said guesting was to play with friends. They are not playing with friends. They are being disruptive of the community they are visiting, leeching, more or less. Not adding to it.

ANet has in my own opinion made many decisions of late where they have failed to live up to their own credo of trying to make players happy to see other players come along in an MMO. It was one of the main reasons I became enamored with this game when I beta’d.

Finally, the bandaid fix, what I call a tourniquet, of limiting players ikittenone, has crippled the game. Now I just end up in overflow unless it’s 4am and I wait for 3 hours. Literally standing around with 50 strangers. It’s no longer fun. I can no longer even complete an entire daily in the same zone while waiting. My community has effectively been disbursed.

Perform a root cause analysis, and fix the problems. Truly fix the problems. I originally suggested on day 1 to remove looting of chests from these events from guests. I still feel that is an appropriate solution. Increasing the frequency of the events is “a” solution, but these events are supposed to feel epic, even if the fights are somewhat rote, making them more frequent is just going to make them more boring.

Or better yet, redistribute loot drop rates across the game world so that these events are not the only places that “quality” loot is guaranteed. You still need to make it so that guesting allows people to “trial run” a server but without destroying the community while doing so. Put yourselves in our shoes, if you care to.

What is really annoying about the guesting feature is not only that people exploit it to farm dragon chests on other servers (didn’t Anet say they don’t this game to be a farm/grind fest?), it also stops me from playing with my friends. Sometimes I can’t get in my server for HOURS if there is a dragon coming soon and even if I can it lags. A lot.

I still think guesting is a good idea but right now it causes to many problems.

Prior to the changes in loot mechanics at the last content patch, I (and my guild) regularly participated in dragon and other world dynamic meta-events. This happened organically. A few of us started the trend, we started showing up as a guild, had fun, and then many of us began to keep track of these events. We would characteristically show up en masse, often 10-15 individuals sporting our guild tag would appear at an event. We would have spontaneous guild camaraderie and events. Those who enjoy roleplay would strike up in-character conversations with people hanging out, and gaming would happen. Community would happen. Those of us who might not be roleplaying ourselves could still watch, or run around and kill things, work on dailies, or tease people in WvW to join us. It was, in other words, fun and team building.

It’s been explained several times now why that isn’t possible. Less whamming and bamming, more reading.

Are you telling me its impossible? We’re talking about a few top events like dragon timers not all cursed shore chest events. Look at how extra content and holiday events that launch at say 12 noon pacific time across all servers. It goes live at the same time. We can’t have an internal counter that repeats this for dragons? When a dragon appears there can be a timer that starts to countdown say an hour to trigger the new spawn timer that way it gives a cushion of time so all dragons across servers don’t have to be killed at exact time to keep timers in sync. This can at a minimum stop the whole reasoning behind guesting to kill.

Now the overflow map could be trickier. Depending if its running parrallel with said regional servers can share timers or be fairly close. When we had the karka event for lost shores there were overflow servers running at about the same time together for that big one time event. Overflow should always be running and place people in overflow when maps population calls for it. They aren’t magically created when a demand from map reaches population limits. The internal clock for overflow should tell it theres a meta event going on NA overflow and should be spawned thus spawning it.

Heck I don’t know anything but seeems like theres always a way around everything if theres a will to do it. If its way off then ignotre this post.
GW1 had hundreds of overflow districts running during some holiday events.

I don’t really care what the problem is, I just want to be able to participate in events on my own server I participated in before the last patch was rolled out without any problems. Now I’m constantly placed on overflow and this is getting increasingly annoying. If this was a quick and dirty fix to the lag problem or guesting, doesn’t matter to me. Just fix it.

Yes. What happens when the lowest population server boss doesn’t get killed? Will two dragons spawn? What if the dragon is up for 2 hours after spawn, then gets killed. Does that mean the server that kills the dragon has to wait 5 hours instead of 3?

Then you’ll have people wondering why there dragon isnt spawning and trying to guest all over the place to find the dragon that’s still up.

The recent change to chest drops changed the whole dynamic. Prior to this, many are tied up in dungeons going for the best loot. The open world on several servers had a dead type feel to it, because of that. So people asked for underflow instances. Where if for exampled all servers in Queensdale each had 10 people running around, that they would all come together since it is very low pop and 250 people would be in the entire zone.

Guesting was to make servers with empty areas to allow players to move to another hopping server to feel like they are in a mmo. And that was working as planned, and these people have to get the rewards to otherwise that negates the whole reason to even venture.

It’s when we got world boss drops on timers that this whole new level of zerging kicked in. Now people are jumping in mass all over to the same places.

Cool story? So why not just disable world chests for guesting?

You will still get loot and drops, just not world event chests. Do dragon bosses in your own home world, if it’s not populated enough try a d medium-population server, not high pop. This shouldn’t punish those that already are in a high population server and make them guest to a medium-population server just to do the event they wanted to do.

Dragons and world events can be down without 200+ people, it just might take longer.

One quick question, how many of you who are pointing fingers at guests weren’t doing these chest events as much as you are now?
I ask this because as I keep talking to people I find many weren’t bothering with the chest events prior to this last patch “because the rewards weren’t worth it”.
And now they try to hit as many as possible, while raging about other people doing the exact same thing, the fact that some of those people are guests has absolutely no bearing on the issue, it’s just an easy thing to point fingers at.
The truth of the matter is, if you weren’t doing these events before but are now, you are as much to blame for the problem as the guy guesting next to you.

I’ll repost this from another thread on the same issue:

Booting someone already there just because they’re a guest isn’t the answer. As is making it so you can’t get chests while guesting and so on and so forth. It seems like every suggestion I see regarding this issue is to punish guesters. I’ve even seen people making nasty comments about specific servers because they’ve seen a few people from that server on their own.

No really.

Well I’ve seen every, or very nearly every, NA server showing up at these events, so none of your servers can claim “it’s everyone else”.

You’re frustrated, I get that, I’ve experienced similar! I even had an event I barely made it out of overflow to attend lag so badly I lost my connection, and then when I logged back in the chest wasn’t there, so I figured I’d simply not gotten credit, no prob.
Tried again a few hours later, less lag, got credit, but…no chest.
Which means that event I lagged out of? Yeah, the game gave me credit, and counted it as my daily opening of the SB chest even though I never even saw the freaking chest.
Which coincidentally means the “once a day” part is tied to completion of the event and not the actual opening of the chest, which I find incredibly stupid, no matter how many times I do the event, if I don’t open it it should still be there the next time.

Talk about angry.

But. Being angry at people guesting trying to get the same reward I was there for is stupid. (okay, I will admit minor annoyance at the guy talking about getting his second Final Rest when I logged back on). That’s not going to solve the problem, and I would downvote any suggestion made out of anger sight-unseen.

There are too many reasons someone might be guesting to focus the solution on that.
They’re playing with a friend, and all of a sudden, booted so you can get your shiny.
The event is broken on their home server, too bad, no chests for guests (hey that rhymed!)
People blame it on greed, saying I can’t have it because he’s here trying to get what I want, so make it so he can’t have it so he’ll go away so I can have it.
Which looks an awful lot like the frying pan and the pot if you ask me.

The problem has a couple of core points. First, major event chests got buffed and are now actually worth doing. This is a good thing, something we needed very badly, however, this makes the rewards from the chests better than a lot of other sources, and it’s amazing the number of people I’ve seen saying the rewards need to be nerfed back to where it was, what if those other sources simply got a bit of a boost as well?
Might help some, but a minimum of a rare is hard to pass up.
Second is how each server’s world events are independently timed, which means that at any given time only a couple major events are running at once, so it’s only natural that people flock to them. There’s also the consideration that if two major events pop at the same time on my server and I can only hit one of them, and don’t have 3 hours to wait for the other to respawn, but other server X has that event going on in 20 minutes why not grab that other chest in the time I have?

While we’re divided up into arbitrary “servers” for technical reasons and pitted against each other in WvW we’re all here to play the same game and have fun, solutions to problems like this should never punish one segment of the population for anothers profit (which is basically what a lot of the suggestions I see are).

The best solution I’ve seen would be to try to synchronize major events, so they run concurrently across as many servers as possible (maybe break it up into 2-3 groups). Think about it, if Jormag was up on every server at the same time, no one would need to guest to do it, unless theirs was broken, but even then since a lot of others servers had it going they wouldn’t all pile into one place.
Now, I have no idea what kind of technical mumbo jumbo would be required to pull that off, but I think the idea has merit, even if they could only synch up small groups, like 3-4 servers, having multiple places for people to go would spread the crowd out considerably.

“The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game.
There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.” -AnthonyOrdon

After pawing through over seven pages of posts, and doing more than my share of grumbling with friends and guildmates, it looks like there are so many issues tangled up together that there simply isn’t a “quick and easy” way to fix them all. That said, if we try to pull apart this rat’s nest of problems, and tackle each issue one by one, it might be easier for the developers to understand our suggestions – and perhaps translate them into something that’s workable for the long term. First up, we need to examine what the root problems – and then the causes – that are upsetting so much of the player base:

Issue: Missing events that you have waited for is wasted time, and everyone’s time is limited, no matter how dedicated to the game.Cause: Being added to an Overflow server because your home server is full.Cause: The game server has become so lagged due to the large population influx that it cannot properly process a player’s attacks, and thus participation. Cause: Player generated timers are only as reliable as the players who maintain them; often more than half the timers are flagged as out of date on some servers.Cause: Players who choose not to utilize community timers could wait for several hours (stuck in one area, unable to do anything else) in order to catch a major event. Issue: Players are using the Guesting feature to streamline their meta event farming, thus compounding the first issue.Cause: Players who are forced into Overflow on their own server may be using Guesting to access a server with an accurate player run event Timer.Cause: Players who are on a server where a given event is hours way may be using Guesting to access a server where the event is much more close to activating.Cause: Players may be under the mistaken belief that participating in an event with more people yields better loot.Cause: There’s no real way to tell who is a Guest in order to hit up an event vs. someone who is a Guest to spend time with friends.

Let’s just chew on these first two issues for now, because their causes (and unfortunate effects) are largely intertwined. While it will not fix all the major causes of people missing their events, or single-handledly make everyone packs up their bags and run events on their own servers, I think it would go a very long way toward redistributing populations to where they came from, and more importantly, help take away the perceived penalties of being tossed into Overflow:

Have all events trigger at a given time, and have that time synched up across all servers, including Overflow, so that they happen at the same time.

Let’s now tear apart that idea and see how it helps elevate many of the above causes of player frustration:

Cause: Being added to an Overflow server because your home server is full.Improvement: One of the primary complaints of being added to an Overflow server is that you are no longer waiting for the event you had timed, because each server’s events are slightly off from one another. If all events trigger at the same time, across all servers, being in Overflow means you’re just as ready as when you were on your home server.Cause: The game server has become so lagged due to the large population influx that it cannot properly process a player’s attacks, and thus participation. Improvement: By making Overflow feel less of a punishment – since you would still be able to enjoy your event – folks wouldn’t fight so hard to avoid it, meaning there will be fewer players crammed into each event’s area. Furthermore, players will be less inclined to Guest to another server to avoid Overflow, which means fewer people suddenly pouring into other servers as events approach.Cause: Player generated timers are only as reliable as the players who maintain them; often more than half the timers are flagged as out of date on some servers.Improvement: By implementing set launch times for events players will not waste time on incorrect or poorly maintained player-run resources. The folks who run the current timers do their best to keep them updated, (Thank you, player community!) but official timers would always be 100% accurate. Cause: Players who choose not to utilize community timers could wait for several hours (stuck in one area, unable to do anything else) in order to catch a major event. Improvement: With game-synchronized timers, no one has to cross their fingers and hope if they want to participate in a meta event. Gamers with limited play time could easily find something appropriate for their level range and plan to attend.Cause: Players who are forced into Overflow on their own server may be using Guesting to access a server with an accurate player run event Timer.Improvement: Because all timers would be the same across all servers (even the Overflow servers), the only reason to Guest to another server for an event would be to play with friends.Cause: Players who are on a server where a given event is hours way may be using Guesting to access a server where the event is much more close to activating.Improvement: As above, there would be no timing advantage to skipping from server to server, since the events would be going off on one’s home server at the same time.Cause: Players may be under the mistaken belief that participating in an event with more people yields better loot.Improvement: While I’m fairly sure this is simply not true, concentrating the number of players back into their home servers (since there would be no advantage to being a Guest somewhere else) should help appease players’ worries about not having enough numbers to take down bosses, to gain the best loot. Cause: There’s no real way to tell who is a Guest in order to hit up an event vs. someone who is a Guest to spend time with friends.Improvement: Being a Guest would, hopefully, stop coming with an ugly social stigma attached to it because folks would be running events on their home servers. This allows players to hang out with friends who play on other servers, as Guesting is supposed to help facilitate.

Would having all events on a set schedule, synchronized ac cross all servers instantly fix all of the problems that have lead to the hundreds of posts in this thread? Of course not. It would, however, go a long way to elevating a good deal of the current causes of frustration that many are experiencing, and set a precedent for further events that might pop up down the line. A few final thoughts:

Have minor events (such as the Fire Elemental, Maw, Behemoth, etc) run every other hour, with the events staggered so something is always going on.

Make sure at least two events are happening at any given time, so that players are split up between them, instead of forming one giant mass that leads to lag.

Have major events (Temples in Orr, etc) run every three hours, with the events staggered so there’s always something happening for players to participate in.

Make sure there’s a Major and Minor event going at the same time, so that if not enough players turn out for a Major event, they can swing by the Minor and still do something.

Have all the events frequently enough that players in any given quadrant (0:01-6:00, 6:01-12:00, 12:01-18:00, 18:01-0:00) have a shot at them. IE: Temple of Zephyrs doesn’t just go off at 8 am and 8pm, shutting out the early morning and late night crowd.

Uh, I would still be annoyed if I was constantly in overflow. I had the same complaint when they introduced Fractals to Lion’s Arch, or with the starting zones close to launch. I want to play alongside the community I chose to be around when I picked a server, not with a bunch of strangers from other servers.

If people are being pushed out of their chosen server onto an overflow server because guests are taking up available slots, there’s still a problem, regardless of whether there’s a world event going on or not.

Then you would be annoyed simply because there are too many people on your server, in which case, they might as well remove the overflow feature and introduce queue times so that you may avoid them. Would you really want to wait in a queue like WvW rather than be given a chance to play while you wait? You can’t fit an an entire server’s worth of players into a zone.

If all the timers were fixed, there would no longer be a reason to guest to other servers, since all servers would have the event starting at the same time. You could guest to another server after yours finished, in an attempt to find a server that’s slower at completing it, but by that point, you should have already joined the event, so unless your server is overpopulated, you wouldn’t have been in an overflow.

You’re just not understanding that the timers can not all be synced. There are different pre-events for these events and when those events are completed depend entirely on when the players in each server completes them. You’re arguing for a change that can’t even work.

Yes. What happens when the lowest population server boss doesn’t get killed? Will two dragons spawn? What if the dragon is up for 2 hours after spawn, then gets killed. Does that mean the server that kills the dragon has to wait 5 hours instead of 3?

Then you’ll have people wondering why there dragon isnt spawning and trying to guest all over the place to find the dragon that’s still up.

No, logistical nightmare

No the dragons disappears after the Hour i mentioned. The dragon spawns and you have the hour to kill itor it disappears (gets away) and starts toward the next timer.

You’re just not understanding that the timers can not all be synced. There are different pre-events for these events and when those events are completed depend entirely on when the players in each server completes them. You’re arguing for a change that can’t even work.

Then synchronize the starting of the first pre-event in each chain, to a given point on the clock. It doesn’t matter if Server A starts a t12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:12, and server B starts at 12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:15. They both start the chain at the same time.

Uh, I would still be annoyed if I was constantly in overflow. I had the same complaint when they introduced Fractals to Lion’s Arch, or with the starting zones close to launch. I want to play alongside the community I chose to be around when I picked a server, not with a bunch of strangers from other servers.

If people are being pushed out of their chosen server onto an overflow server because guests are taking up available slots, there’s still a problem, regardless of whether there’s a world event going on or not.

Then you would be annoyed simply because there are too many people on your server, in which case, they might as well remove the overflow feature and introduce queue times so that you may avoid them. Would you really want to wait in a queue like WvW rather than be given a chance to play while you wait? You can’t fit an an entire server’s worth of players into a zone.

If all the timers were fixed, there would no longer be a reason to guest to other servers, since all servers would have the event starting at the same time. You could guest to another server after yours finished, in an attempt to find a server that’s slower at completing it, but by that point, you should have already joined the event, so unless your server is overpopulated, you wouldn’t have been in an overflow.

You’re just not understanding that the timers can not all be synced. There are different pre-events for these events and when those events are completed depend entirely on when the players in each server completes them. You’re arguing for a change that can’t even work.

Not if you have an hour to complete the event from when it starts. The event fails if the Dragon isn’t defeated within that hour. Then event moves onto next timer. Jonez dies at grenth move on to next timer type of thing.

You’re just not understanding that the timers can not all be synced. There are different pre-events for these events and when those events are completed depend entirely on when the players in each server completes them. You’re arguing for a change that can’t even work.

Then synchronize the starting of the first pre-event in each chain, to a given point on the clock. It doesn’t matter if Server A starts a t12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:12, and server B starts at 12:05 and finishes Maw at 12:15. They both start the chain at the same time.

No. There are examples of pre-events that will not start until all other events in the areas used by the pre-event are clear and finished. It’s not possible to start all the pre-events at the same time without oddly and suddenly aborting all unrelated events in the nearby area (which is sure to annoy people who are working on those events).

You have to remember, ArenaNet is going through a lot of trouble to sell the idea that you’re playing in an organic, living world. I very much doubt that they’re going to be willing to just suddenly abort events and reset areas right in front of our eyes just to begin a world event on a rigid timer.

No. There are examples of pre-events that will not start until all other events in the areas used by the pre-event are clear and finished. It’s not possible to start all the pre-events at the same time without oddly and suddenly aborting all unrelated events in the nearby area (which is sure to annoy people who are working on those events).

Could you post an example of this, please? I’ll use Maw as my example:

No. There are examples of pre-events that will not start until all other events in the areas used by the pre-event are clear and finished. It’s not possible to start all the pre-events at the same time without oddly and suddenly aborting all unrelated events in the nearby area (which is sure to annoy people who are working on those events).

Could you post an example of this, please?

Sure. On top of needing to be in the proper window, they very popular Secret of the Swamps event can not begin unless the Greatheart Weald and Eldvin Monastery are clear of events. This is because those locations are used as part of Secret of the Swamps event chain and, for whatever reason, the designers have chosen not to allow them to overlap.

Sure. On top of needing to be in the proper window, they very popular Secret of the Swamps event can not begin unless the Greatheart Weald and Eldvin Monastery are clear of events. This is because those locations are used as part of Secret of the Swamps event chain and, for whatever reason, the designers have chosen not to allow them to overlap.

Alright, I see what you’re saying now. How about Weald and Monastery events pop at 12:05, then, allowing players to know when to begin working on the pre-events for the Behemoth? That would then lead to the portal events, the disturbance in the middle of the swamp, and of course the big-ugly himself.

Edit: I totally understand that it’s not a one-off, quick fix that will wipe away all of the issues posted in this thread. That said, even though it might not work right out of the box “Stick it all on timers, fast!”, I think the idea is certainly workable, and a good starting point.

Alright, I see what you’re saying now. How about Weald and Monastery events pop at 12:05, then, allowing players to know when to begin working on the pre-events for the Behemoth? That would then lead to the portal events, the disturbance in the middle of the swamp, and of course the big-ugly himself.

The events in the Monastery have their own chains, though, which are completely unrelated to the Secrets of the Swamp event. They happen when they happen, which is often based on when players happened to trigger and complete (or fail) some previous stage of the chain. There are no set times for those to fire off.

An example of an event that blocks the Secrets of the Swamp is the event “Return stolen kegs of ale to Abbot Mathias”. If that event is in-progress, “Secrets of the Swamp” will not start (and, honestly, it’s a little ridiculous seeing several dozen players standing at the bosses spawn point wondering why the Behemoth is late, but refusing to lift a finger to investigate why).

However, the Return Kegs quest only triggers if players happen to fail the event “Drive back the centaurs before they steal the monastery’s ale”. What if they don’t fail it (which triggers an escort quest as a follow up)? Or what if they do and it takes one server 20 minutes to recover the ale while another takes 5, and yet another avoids starting the event altogether? Too many pieces to juggle without just redesigning the world event.

why people got friends and play on different servers, instead of transfering is beyond me

and yes guesting adds more problems to the crowded events.

myself have to guest now when i want to do shatter/jormag/tequila in a reasonable time. either guest or sit afk up to an hour in the zone so u dont get into the overflow.

some people may got the time to camp whole day all dragons, think the majority doesnt

Ah, let me explain. Before the game came out they really hyped up this guesting feature, no more worries about permanently being separated from friends because you chose different servers, doesn’t matter what server you pick you’ll be able to play together!!!111oneone

So I have friends on four different servers, explain how a server transfer is supposed to help me play with all of them? Please, I’m dying to know.

Oh, everyone should just transfer to be on one server? Alright, well I’m heavily invested into 3 guilds, my friends equally invested into guilds on each of their servers, so who is supposed to throw all their effort out to window by transferring? Just in case you aren’t aware, while a “Guild” is across all servers (presumably to prevent issues if a guild decided to switch servers, so no one else could cause a name collision) everything your guild does is limited to the server you’re currently on (presumably to discourage guilds from changing servers, yeah figure that logic out), so if you change servers any and all progress made/Influence earned is left behind and thus totally worthless if you move.

Guesting was supposed to be the perfect solution, and while it turned out to be a pale shadow of what we all imagined it would be it does provide us a way to play with friends who specifically decided not to worry about gathering on one server because we’d be able to guest. So I’d appreciate it if people would stop trying to get it removed/crippled further.

“The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game.
There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.” -AnthonyOrdon

The events in the Monastery have their own chains, though, which are completely unrelated to the Secrets of the Swamp event. They happen when they happen, which is often based on when players happened to trigger and complete (or fail) some previous stage of the chain. There are no set times for those to fire off.

If they’re wholly unrelated, however, why not allow them to overlap, as the Veteran worm and broken armor events overlap freely with the Maw chain? This small change (granted, I have no idea how much a nightmare it would be to change in the code) would allow people to continue working on these unrelated chains while still having the Behemoth on a solid timer. I’m sure the Secrets of the Swamp isn’t the only situation in which this situation raises, but again, if there’s no actual link between the outside events and the meta event/prevevents, why not just change them to overlap?

When I suggested fixed timers, I meant only for the world bosses, as defined by the wiki (shatterer, tequatl, maw, shadow behemoth, fire elemental, jungle wurm) . Other events like the Orr temples wouldn’t make sense, since some of them rely on the status of the zone and they can be defended, changing how they act. Plus, those smaller events probably don’t see overflow, since they’re out of the way and have a higher difficulty, reducing the casual incentive.

Most of the world bosses start by randomly spawning a pre-event and just starting. This pre-event should spawn on a fixed timer. Failure to complete the event within the hour would cause it to fail.

For the few exceptions, the events that interfere should be designed to work in sync by either allowing it to be ran at the same time or by failing ahead of time. Alternatively, nothing can be changed and the dragon event is simply flagged to start as soon as the event that’s blocking it is completed, making that event part of the meta from the player’s point of view.

1 – lag is and has been horrible in any event/area with large numbers of players all in the same vicinity. WvW is still plagued by this whenever two zergs meet. The culling and lag reign supreme. I would also assume that if two large guilds are tasked with the same bounty target and a huge turnout ensues – there will be lag.
Fix the lag/culling issues.

2 – overflows are the result of Anet trying to fix the lag/culling by reducing the maximum number of players in the vicinity. Of course this causes issue especially since people want to believe it’s mainly guesting players that bump up the numbers. I would wager a guess that it is due to the min/max crowds more than guests. But I may be wrong
Guests should be the first to be thrown into overflow if it occurs.

3. The loot has been terrible in open world PvE. This has been fixed but they should extend it to the event chains that end in glorious and better chest rewards. Expanding the rewards to other large events/chains will spread out the population further.

4. Restricting rewards is not the answer. Alts were already dealt the short end of the stick when laurels were introduced as a currency. They have restricted the rewards to one chest/character/day. If someone wants to use all their alts to do this.. more power to them. I wouldn’t but that’s me. I have two alts and have only run one single dragon event since the patch. The lag and disconnects and such just made it not worth doing it again; no matter what the prize was inside the bottom of the cracker jack box.

Guesting was a bad idea… I do not even see the perks. DO you guys not assume that most people who want to play together already are? It is sad, the in game events were just beginning to have some stability but now I rarely even encounter a major in game event. Instead I am constantly shoved into an over flow server. I know I can reach the event by grouping with someone who is doing it but this makes it such a process. I no longer get a sense of anything happening in the world; instead I feel like I couldn’t get into a concert because the theater was too packed and I am outside smoking with the rest of the unfortunate people. Please find a way to resolve this… I am trying my best to stay with this game..

I think it’s more a case of “feature working as intended, players just never think about the consequences of seeing their constant demands finally met”

Players shouldn’t HAVE to think about issues like this. This is an encouraged and implemented feature from Anet. Players doing “due diligence” to make sure they don’t “overcrowd” is absolutely ludicrous .

Looks like this has been merged, so here it is again for the red moderator in this thread.

I’ll just put this here:
It isn’t guesting. That has been around for a long time (comparitively).
The problem is the loot change. you now get a rare for opening that chest.

There are an estimated 3 million owners of GW2. I would be surprised if a single instance (ie map) could handle more than 200 players on it. They all want those chests now.

Now instead of doing dungeons exclusively due to all blue/green loot from event chests. They run every dragon/event they can; because it is a guaranteed 50 silver. (ecto from 1 rare + change from everything else).

Sometimes you even get 2 gold from one chest; sometimes you win the lottery and get a precursor. Which was always the case, but the critical difference is now the minimum reward is more than 5 silver.

Multiply the minimum reward by 10, increase the minimum number of players wanting to do an event by 10.

I’ll just put this here:
It isn’t guesting. That has been around for a long time (comparitively).
The problem is the loot change. you now get a rare for opening that chest.

There are an estimated 3 million owners of GW2. I would be surprised if a single instance (ie map) could handle more than 200 players on it. They all want those chests now.

Now instead of doing dungeons exclusively due to all blue/green loot from event chests. They run every dragon/event they can; because it is a guaranteed 50 silver. (ecto from 1 rare + change from everything else).

Sometimes you even get 2 gold from one chest; sometimes you win the lottery and get a precursor. Which was always the case, but the critical difference is now the minimum reward is more than 5 silver.

Multiply the minimum reward by 10, increase the minimum number of players wanting to do an event by 10.

Meatea there is no need to be insulting. If you read the thread you will see what you have said has already been stated many times.

Overflow problems appeared only few days ago. not directly after guesting has been introduced.
What’s the conclusion then? It’s not about guesting. Anet has probably decreased map capacity to get rid of lags.

Overflow problems appeared only few days ago. not directly after guesting has been introduced.
What’s the conclusion then? It’s not about guesting. Anet has probably decreased map capacity to get rid of lags.

I am pretty certain this is the case; however, they should do some more testing on the capacity. I rarely get lag on events like shadow behemoth and fire elemental but ALWAYS get lag on the dragon events. However, I still get booted into the overflow for shadow behemoth and fire elemental which makes me assume that the map capacity for all areas are probably the same. They should adjust the map capacity according to that specific map’s player capacity and not the average capacity.

Overflow problems appeared only few days ago. not directly after guesting has been introduced.
What’s the conclusion then? It’s not about guesting. Anet has probably decreased map capacity to get rid of lags.

I am pretty certain this is the case; however, they should do some more testing on the capacity. I rarely get lag on events like shadow behemoth and fire elemental but ALWAYS get lag on the dragon events. However, I still get booted into the overflow for shadow behemoth and fire elemental which makes me assume that the map capacity for all areas are probably the same. They should adjust the map capacity according to that specific map’s player capacity and not the average capacity.

They should also learn how to solve problems and not choose the easy way all the time. The world events weren’t lagging at all before the patch. They had to mess something up.I hope they figure it out and revert the changes, because landing on overflow all the time is just annoying. Having to reserve a spot way ahead of event is ridiculous.

To suggest guesting isn’t contributing to the problem of people not being able to participate in these events on their home server, when guests are present at the events of said server, is ridiculous.

If the zone was only filled to capacity by residents of that server, that would be one thing. But that is not what is happening. Regardless of how many “natives” there are at these events, there are also guests present at these events while natives are stuck waiting in a queue. And that last part needs to change.

WHEN that is fixed, then we can start complaining about being stuck in overflow too often because of whatever changes were made to these events. But until that point, any guests occupying slots that should be freed up for full-time residents are going to be the targets of frustration, and understandably so.

So it is out of the frying pan an into the failing nuclear reactor. If you’re lucky enough to get into the main district, you live with crushing lag that prevents us from using skills. Unfortunately unless you get there 15 minutes prior to the event, you are moved to the overflow and miss the whole thing.

I think they should kick guests to the overflow when a “citizen” of the server wants to come into the map.

I would like to thank Kallah for a well formatted and thought out post. I don’t necessarily agree with all of what is proposed, simply because it does not seem on first read to address what I perceive to be a core issue:

Community has been, essentially, destroyed at these events.

I’m not criticizing individuals here, merely offering a general sense of what I have read on a number of threads — the gist seems to be that people are looking for a way to accommodate server natives on events, somehow (not rehashing all the suggestions). Optimizing number of people participating and optimizing their ability to get loot.

The game is not just about getting loot out of these few events.

The community, in my opinion, around these events, and as a result of the changes to these events, guesting, looting, etc., has degraded across servers. Not just my “home.”

ANet needs to take a step back and answer this question: Do they want hordes of that 3 million swarming to a handful of events, a fraction of the game’s content, for loot on a somewhat scheduled basis…

or

Does ANet want a robust gaming community where a greater percentage of the game’s content is enjoyed and people are duly rewarded for time invested in exploring, enjoying and sharing that experience with friends?

My recommendation is to either roll back the loot changes to the world bosses, or to change it to a “once per account per boss per day” and then scale the loot to reflect that.

My personal preference would be the former – we don’t need swathes of rare items from world bosses. There are more than enough other avenues for acquiring rare+ quality gear.

What logic states World Bosses shouldn’t drop loot better then a Risen Chicken? People should have a reason to want to fight a World Boss and that reason is solely loot based. What now has to happen is a mechanic where 1000’s of players don’t become a slave to farming them on alts and different servers. Some way, some how loot has to become balanced throughout the game. Any place it shows up top heavy there will be 1000’s rushing to it to farm non-stop. Fractals sucked a ton of people out of the open world, then hid the issue because everyone was ikittenman instance. My guess this is way way up there on their list of things to do, figure this loot/mob thing out.

The same logic that dictates a champion in a dungeon should have better loot than a risen chicken: risk v’s reward.

In reality, as long as you can stay out of the red circles, bosses like Maw or Shadow Behemoth are about as challenging as a risen chicken. Not only that, but there is no great challenge to get to them, unlike a dungeon. Meta events fire off and then Bam! There they are sitting in the middle of an open world for anybody to just prance up to and pew pew.

I mean, even Shatterer and Tequatl are mince meat if you know where to stand. Why then should they get special loot? I saw no problem with the way they were set up before hand. People still sought them out, but while there was a hope of being lucky and getting a rare+ item, it wasn’t a basic expectation like it is now.

In my opinion, the whole world boss and dragon event concept has been prostituted by turning it into a loot-fest, and now we have the swarming masses out to exploit the system for their free ectos.

Even with guesting there was nowhere near this amount of disruption before the loot system was changed on these events. Even with guesting, I never, ever saw the overflow server in any of the world/dragon boss zones until this change.

Guaranteed yellows in open world = bad idea, especially when guaranteed lvl 70-80 yellows basically means free ectos. I don’t think this should ever have been done. You want high quality loot? Go to the dungeons. That’s what they’re there for. There’s a reason dungeons and dungeon bosses are more difficult than open world: risk v’s reward. It allows the devs to put in high quality items for us pawns to lust after, without trivialising the value of said items. To put them in such simple and no-brainer locations as world bosses and dragon minions is just prostituting the value of those items.

So the world is dead while all the farmers are off in dungeons? Well, unfortunately you can’t cure greed. One way or the other they’re going to chase the golden carrots regardless of where you put them. Welcome to the joys of a game that in the end is ultimately still based around gear. Shinies = farmers.

And I strongly disagree that the only reason somebody should want to fight a world boss is for loot. That’s just plain greed in a nutshell. If that’s the case you might as well just remove them altogether, because otherwise they’re worthless. Besides, how many times have you gone to an event and seen map chat filled with “Holy ****” and “OMG he’s huge”, and other comments like that from people who are fighting the boss for the first time? Shadow Behemoth is a prime candidate for this. I would argue that people are fighting world bosses for different reasons than loot. Loot is just the icing on the cake.

Roll back the changes to take away the incentive for farmers and exploiters to zerg bumrush all these events and I believe a lot of the overflow issues will dissipate fairly quickly.

Or, perhaps, take the loot away from them completely and replace it with some other tangible reward – maybe zone buffs increasing some aspect of gameplay in that zone for a certain time – karma gain or magic find or something like that. Perhaps defeating a world boss could give access to a special vendor in that zone for a certain amount of time. Then it gives the people in that zone a tangible incentive to defeat the boss, but negates any real incentive for farmers who aren’t going to be staying in the zone after the fight.

So in summary I stand by my original suggestion. These world bosses and dragon minions are not worthy of such high level loot, especially considering the abysmal difficulty level of many of them. Nor do we really need this kind of loot from them. There are plenty of other avenues to get rare+ items.

Its not Guesting or overflow, its loot, if loot was spread over the whole game as it is in world events, these issues wouldn’t exist..

Honestly Anet has limited loot to such an extent these things are the only way for a majority to get nice stuff, easy fast and convenient… not grind slow and painful…

This is why the world events are so bad..the rest of the loot in the worlds need to catch up.

You have to remember, anet employs a open loot per character system. This means that if 10 people tagged 1 mob, they’ll all get a chance at loot while in most other games and let’s say WoW, it employs a single loot shared amongst the party based on a flawed need/greed system. So the question is, do you want 1 rare to share between 5 ppl per chest or do you want a chance at a rare for yourself each on 5 or more people.

Its not Guesting or overflow, its loot, if loot was spread over the whole game as it is in world events, these issues wouldn’t exist..

Honestly Anet has limited loot to such an extent these things are the only way for a majority to get nice stuff, easy fast and convenient… not grind slow and painful…

This is why the world events are so bad..the rest of the loot in the worlds need to catch up.

It depends on what you’re wanting to do… elevating the rest of the looting in the game to match world boss loot may end up devaluing all loot and trivialising it. That’s fine if you’re wanting to basically remove any gear grind and just hand out high level loot to anyone and everyone, but it basically kitten the quality system. What’s the point of having fine or masterwork gear if rare gear basically rains from the sky?

That is the downside to a game that relies on gear quality to give your character stats. Everyone is going to want the best gear they can get, but how exclusive do you make that gear? If you want to remove the gear grind altogether then it’s pointless having anything more than a single quality of gear. In that case you may as well just take the stats off the gear and change it to a character stat based game.

As long as the game depends on stats off gear, you are always going to have some kind of problem with gear accessibility or farming – either the stuff is too easy to get and therefore trivial, or else it is not accessible enough for some and creates the whole min/max elitist scenario with the haves and the have-nots.

At the end of the day you’ll always have winners and losers in gear-based games. I don’t know if that can be overcome.

I don’t really care what the problem is, I just want to be able to participate in events on my own server I participated in before the last patch was rolled out without any problems. Now I’m constantly placed on overflow and this is getting increasingly annoying. If this was a quick and dirty fix to the lag problem or guesting, doesn’t matter to me. Just fix it.

There is nothing technology will allow them to do if many on any server want to be in the same place at the same time in the open world.

In my opinion, the whole world boss and dragon event concept has been prostituted by turning it into a loot-fest, and now we have the swarming masses out to exploit the system for their free ectos.

Even with guesting there was nowhere near this amount of disruption before the loot system was changed on these events. Even with guesting, I never, ever saw the overflow server in any of the world/dragon boss zones until this change.

So excellently stated, the description and observation in your post — I agree, and find it to be dead on.

And I strongly disagree that the only reason somebody should want to fight a world boss is for loot. That’s just plain greed in a nutshell. If that’s the case you might as well just remove them altogether, because otherwise they’re worthless. Besides, how many times have you gone to an event and seen map chat filled with “Holy ****” and “OMG he’s huge”, and other comments like that from people who are fighting the boss for the first time? Shadow Behemoth is a prime candidate for this. I would argue that people are fighting world bosses for different reasons than loot. Loot is just the icing on the cake.

The loot is a nice reward, for certain. Don’t get me wrong, once in 10 or so chests it’s nice to see a rare or so. Definitely a couple greens. Every 20? An exotic maybe. The reality was over the past four plus months quite different. And a precursor? That’s the grail; do the events (or dungeons) hundreds of times in a month, maybe within a year? Maybe?

What we have now is like the mint printing new $20s and throwing them out the windows and doors via leaf blowers. Only the people who have gathered at the front will get them, but it will still impact the economy as much as the community.

We’ve made some changes that should improve overflow issues on most maps. The team is also investigating larger solutions to help in the long term.

Just remove guesting all together or make a tag for dragons chests to be 1/day 1/character/dragon cross server… problem solved

Problem solved.. by punishing people for wanting to play with friends on other servers? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, those are terrible suggestions. I’m glad this is something they’re working on without resorting to these kind of solutions.

Has anyone ever though that you can guest a lower population server? You realize it works both ways. The rewards are high enough that i’m pretty sure if you are on at a peak time your own population will be creating an overflow. Please stop griefing you can’t join an event 30seconds before it ends and get a drop.